Music is a reputably well-known form of human self-expression. However, a person's firsthand appreciation for this artistic endeavor may be derived in different manners. Often, the person can more easily enjoy music by listening to the creations of others rather than generating it by himself or herself. For many people, the ability to hear and recognize an appealing musical composition is innate, while the ability to manually create a proper collection of notes remains out of reach. A person's ability to create new music may be inhibited by the time, money, and/or skill necessary to learn an instrument well-enough to accurately reproduce a tune at will. For most people, their own imaginations may be the source of new music, but their ability to hum or chant this same tune limits the extent to which their tunes can be formally retained and recreated for the enjoyment of others.
Recording a session musician's performance can also be a laborious process. Multiple takes of the same material are recorded and painstakingly scrutinized until a single take can be assembled with all of the imperfections ironed out. A good take often requires a talented artist under the direction of another to adjust his or her performance accordingly. In the case of an amateur recording, the best take is often the result of serendipity and consequently cannot be repeated. More often than not, amateur performers produce takes with both good and bad portions. The recording process would be much easier and more fun if a song could be constructed without having to meticulously analyze every portion of every take. Thus, it is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.
Moreover, the music that a person desires to create may be complex. For example, an envisioned tune can have more than one instrument, which may be played concurrently with other instruments in a potential arrangement. This complexity further adds to the time, skill, and/or money required for a lone person to generate a desired combination of sounds. The physical configuration of most musical instruments also requires a person's full physical attention to manually generate notes, further requiring additional personnel to play the additional parts of a desired tune. Additionally, extra review and management may then be necessary to ensure proper interaction of the various involved instruments and elements of a desired tune.
Even for people who already enjoy creating their own music, those listeners may lack the type of expertise that enables proper composition and music creation. As a result, the music created may contain notes that are not within the same musical key or chord. In most musical styles, the presence of off-key or off-chord notes, often referred to as “inharmonious” notes, causes the music to be unpleasing and jarring. Accordingly, because of their lack of experience and training, music listeners often create music that sounds undesirable and unprofessional.
For some people, artistic inspiration is not bound by the same time and location limitations that are typically associated with the generation and recording of new music. For example, a person may not be in a production studio with a playable instrument at hand when an idea for a new tune materializes. After the moment of inspiration passes, the person may not be able to recall the complete extent of the original tune, resulting in a loss of artistic effort. Moreover, the person may become frustrated with the time and effort applied in recreating no more than an inferior and incomplete version of his or her initial musical revelation.
Professional music composing and editing software tools are currently generally available. However, these tools project an intimidating barrier to entry for a novice user. Such complex user interfaces can soon sap the enthusiasm of any beginner who dares venture their way on an artistic whim. Being tethered to a suite of pro-audio servers also cramps the style of the mobile creative, wanting to craft a tune on the move.
What is needed is a system and method of music creation that can easily interface with a user's most basic ability, yet enable the creation of music that is as complex as the user's imagination and expectations. There is also an associated need to facilitate the creation of music free from notes that are inharmonious. In addition, there is a need in the art for a music authoring system that can generate a musical compilation track by aggregating portions of multiple takes based on automated selection criteria. It is also desirable that such a system further be implemented in a manner that is not limited by the location of a user when inspiration occurs, thereby enabling capture of the first utterances of a new musical composition.
There is an associated need in the art for a system and method that can create a compilation track from multiple takes by automatically evaluating the quality of previously recorded tracks and selecting the best of the previously recorded tracks, recorded via an electronic authoring system.
It is also desirable to implement a system and method for music creation that is based in the cloud whereby processing-intensive functions are implemented by a server remote from a client device. However, because digital music creation relies on vast amounts of data, such configurations are generally limited by at several factors. For the provider, processing, storing and serving such large amounts of data may be overwhelming unless the central processor is extremely powerful and thus expensive from a cost and latency point-of view. Given current costs for storing and sending data, the transmission of data from a rendering server to a client can quickly become cost prohibitive and may also add undesirable latency. From the client perspective, bandwidth limitations may also lead to significant latency issues, which detract from the user experience. Thus, there is also a need in the art for a system that can address and overcome these drawbacks.